George Santayana had an irrational faith in reason ... I have irrational faith in television.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction at its Best

A superb, jolting alternate reality finale to the first season of Fringe tonight, which kicked us into all sorts of incredible things, including that we'll be seeing a second incredible season of Fringe starting this Fall.

Here's what we saw and learned -

[[HUGE SPOILERS FOLLOW]]

1. Jones, the teleporting cruel scientist who dominated a lot of the action in the first part of the season, is trying to go into an alternate dimension, where he can presumably cure himself and/or confront Bell. Olivia and Walter stop that - with a device Walter has, which he had years ago, which plugs up the portal. Jones is stopped halfway into the portal. He dies, as his body is literally sawed in half between two realities...

And that's the least incredible thing we learn tonight...

2. The two realities are more or less the same, with some "minor" differences. We learn, in a powerful scene with Walter at a grave site, that his son Peter died in 1985, as a little boy. Ergo, the Peter Bishop we have come to know this season must be Peter from the alternate reality, whom Walter presumably kidnapped years ago.... leaving the other Walter bereft of a son? ... We'll no doubt learn more about this next season...

3. And the most incredible, daring part of this alternate reality of all: Olivia goes into this alternate reality to meet William Bell - played by Leonard Nimoy. That's not the incredible part - we already knew that....

But Olivia sees a newspaper - its headline says "Obamas set to move into new White House..."*

And when she looks out of the window of the skyscraper ... and the camera moves out the window and shows us where she is ... We see she is one of the World Trade Center Towers, apparently not destroyed in this reality ... (perhaps the White House was, and that's why it's being rebuilt?)

And so we're left with a brilliantly provocative ending ... Applause to Fringe for daring to do this. Science fiction at its very best. (I said in my review of Fringe's episode last week that I expected to see some glimmering connection between the finale of Fringe and the new Star Trek movie ... it's the mixing of alternate realities....)

*And here's a screen shot of that New York Post front page ... looks in the upper left corner as if JFK might not have been assassinated in this reality!

About Me

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication &
Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997),
Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the
subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science
Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).His short stories
have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.Paul Levinson appears on "The
O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"“NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),“Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous
national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of
television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of
Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

e-mail received from a reader:Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom